Cheers Darlin'
by love-r-of-Jam
Summary: This is a two parter, with Jess sitting in a bar watching Rory. It's his p.o.v.
1. Cheers Darlin'

Cheers Darlin'

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls, or Damien Rice's song. IF I did I would be richer and prettier and probably loaded up with plastic surgery. But no it's me with my lack of silicone self.

Summary: This will be a two part-er. The first will be Jess and the second will be Logan. I just thought of this when I heard the song.

Authors Note: Who else felt a little blah after the finale? What the hell are they going to do next year? Anyhoo, this is a little Lit/Rogan type of thing I've been thinking of since I was at Disney World two weeks ago. I hope you like this. It hasn't been checked for errors, so if it sucks, oh well.

Read and Review!

Running in the rain what am i darlin'?

A whisper in your ear?

A piece of your cake?

What am I darling? The boy you can fear?

Or your biggest mistake?

Cheers Darlin'

Here's to you and your lover man

Cheers Darlin'

I'll just hang around and eat from a can

Cheers Darlin'

I got a ribbon of green on my guitar

Cheers Darlin'

I got a beauty queen to sit not very far from me

I die when he comes around to take you home

I'm too shy I should have kissed you when we were alone

What am I darlin'?

A whisper in your ear?  A piece of your cake?

What am I Darlin?

The boy you can fear?

Or your biggest mistake?

What am I?

Here's to you and your lover

What am I darlin'?

I got years to wait around for you…

(cheers darlin' Damien Rice)

Jess sat in the local pub that most of the most self important Yalies went to, with a beer in front of him watching. He loved to people watch, a great thing for a writer to do. He liked to see what they wore, whatever quirks they had, and most especially, what made them unique.

He had spent two years doing it, and he started realizing that certain actions led to certain personality traits. He knew the self possessed, the self-conscious, the smart alecks and the smarty-pants. He knew what a person who was dying inside looked like, and what a person who was dying to get out looked like. He was an aficionado on people, and he knew that one day it would get him in trouble.

When he was a kid, and relying on himself, he knew who to approach and who not to, to get money, drugs, alcohol whatever he wanted. He knew the one most likely to report him as well. He made sure to stay away from them. It was his gift, his sixth sense, and he used it well.

That's how he stay so long under the radar, and probably how he luckily stayed out of jail or even juvie. He just had that kind of instincts. Some are born with natural street instincts and he had that in spades. A girl, who used to follow him around, said it was because he was a mutt. Mutts needed to evolve to survive the harsh world run by purebreds.

It wasn't that his parents had that different backgrounds. His mother was from a good lower middle class family from a stupid small town in Connecticut, and his father's family was very Italian, and very New York. They also itched to get out, and itched to get away from the life that always seemed to follow them.

And now, years later, he sees the one good thing he ever touched, with the worse kind of person. The 'I don't care' kind. He had seen him in this bar a bunch of times, he directed people, he drank and he laughed and he insulted. He was the worst kind of rich, and the worst kind of person, and he had a claim to the only thing that ever truly mattered to him, the one thing he massively ruined.

Rory Gilmore hung off this jackass's arm like he was the messiah, and it riled Jess. How could she sink so low? He had heard rumblings that Rory had slept with Dean, the last time he was in town, but that was kind of expected, but this? This was a little too much.

She hadn't noticed him yet. He thanked god for that. He sat with his half drunk pint of beer, and watched Rory Gilmore act like something out of his worse nightmares. She laughed just as loud, and acted just like the blond nightmare. And Jess watched her as some people watched an accident on the side of the road. Full of horror and fascination. Rory looked different, she had fully grown into her long body and now she rivaled her mother for beauty. Her blue eyes pierced men straight to the heart just like Lorelai, but there was something different.

There was a pain that he noticed right away. If he stared at her eyes long enough, without being noticed he could almost hear the screaming in his head. She was miserable, and I guess that made Jess feel sorry for her. She may have the room's attention, even the jackass attention, but that didn't mean she was happy.

And if there was something Rory Gilmore deserved, it was to be happy. The Rory that jess knew, was happy most of the time. She was the type to be perfectly happy with a somewhat comfortable seat and a good book. She was the exact opposite of complicated. And now looking at her, he could hear wherever his instincts were, 'high strung and complicated' whispered in his ear.

He watched as the guy went off with a lot of the same pretentious Yalies man and woman alike, while Rory stayed back. She smiled once or twice to assure whoever may be looking that she was all right. She was cool. And then she hunched over the table with her head resting on her fist and she frowned. Even from across the pub, he could see that she was upset.

She looked up at that exact moment, and he chose this to be the moment that she would remember later in life. He raised his glass and nodded and whispered the words he had wanted to say since he saw her. 'Cheers Darling.' He said and he saw a little tear escape one of those perfect sapphire eyes.

Neither said anything or did anything, and Jess watched as the asshole came back and kissed Rory. Something Jess wishes he could do once more. They both got up with one easy gesture, he threw down enough money to pay for everyone's drinks in the whole Bar, without much thought on his part, and they left.

He raised his glass as he watched her leave, and he noticed she glanced his way one last time. 'Cheers Darling' he said again and this time she looked more upset. He would see Rory Gilmore again, that he was sure of.


	2. Cheers Darling Redux

Cheers Darlin'

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls, or Damien Rice's song. IF I did I would be richer and prettier and probably loaded up with plastic surgery. But no it's me with my lack of silicone self.

Summary: This will be a two part-er. The first will be Jess and the second will be Logan. I just thought of this when I heard the song.

Authors Note: so this is a tad more graphic than my previous chapter. I am in a bad mood, and so I figured, if I warn people, I am sure it's ok. I'm not quite sure that this is equal to the last chapter, but I hope you guys like it. !

Read and Review!

Running in the rain what am i darlin'?

A whisper in your ear?

A piece of your cake?

What am I darling? The boy you can fear?

Or your biggest mistake?

Cheers Darlin'

Here's to you and your lover man

Cheers Darlin'

I'll just hang around and eat from a can

Cheers Darlin'

I got a ribbon of green on my guitar

Cheers Darlin'

I got a beauty queen to sit not very far from me

I die when he comes around to take you home

I'm too shy I should have kissed you when we were alone

What am I darlin'?

A whisper in your ear?  A piece of your cake?

What am I Darlin?

The boy you can fear?

Or your biggest mistake?

What am I?

Here's to you and your lover

What am I darlin'?

I got years to wait around for you…

(Cheers darlin' Damien Rice

**What a difference a few months made. The last time he had entered the bar, he had been people watching. But now he found that people watched him. But how could they not, he had a beautiful women on his arm. And even more importantly, he, Jess Mariano, was smiling. Not because of some miscreant deed he had just performed, nor had he managed to annoy past enemies and people who got in his way, he was smiling because he was content. **

**No longer was he the gangly smart kid in a bad part of the neighborhood. He was no longer the angry, black leather coat wearing, hugest fucking chip on his shoulder bad boy in the goody two shoe town, he was the guy who had managed to fool the girl he was in love with, that he was everything she thought he was. **

**Rory Gilmore now smiled, like she did when she was 17 and didn't quite understand that there was a big bad world out there just waiting for her. She no longer felt like she was disappointing just about every person who met her before her fall from grace. No longer was she arm candy, or a partner in crime that actually were illegal. She was Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, and she knew what that meant. **

**After they had spied each other in the bar, Rory had sat up all night starring out of the window, with the rain falling and the comet crashing to earth realization, that she had been lost for a long time. Maybe it had started with Chilton, that first big fight with her mother, or maybe the fiasco with Jess and the car, or most likely when she gave up her virginity to a man she knew she would have no future with. **

**She wasn't stupid; she knew that sleeping with Dean was a colossal mistake. He wasn't available. Not to her anyway, and she knew deep down that they wouldn't have the neat package with the white picket fence. But she went ahead anyways, and had started her path of self-destruction. **

**The next year, she concentrated too hard on making things seem better than that low point. A relationship with her fellow adulterer seemed like a good idea, but then he had ruined things by thinking they didn't belong together. Then Logan came around, and he was just the ticket. **

**He was callous and self involved and smart, and he could run circles around Rory. She had never met anyone who could keep up with her, besides Jess, and he was off limits and out in California or New York, or wherever he chose to roam these days. Logan was easy and complicated and before she even realized it, had ruined her life beyond repair. Had made her mother, the one person she could always say was the closet thing to her, light years away. Her grandparents didn't even recognize her anymore, and she was lost. Miles of water above her head and out of air, and she didn't know how to fix it. So she became the person that people around her expected her to become. **

**Interested in money and clothes and monetary things, and no longer was a festival in her hometown square, the life-altering thing it used to be growing up. She distanced herself from everything that anyone who loved her, and was disappointed in her, would recognize. The simple clothes and simple hair was now gone, and there in their stead was fancy hair and the clothes any socialite would dream of. And she was miserable. **

**Logan began to act like the ever loyal and loving boyfriend, and he had fooled her into thinking it was possible. He no longer 'disappeared' like he used to when they were casual. Instead he just went to people who were too far from her comfort level, so Rory would never potentially find out about his indiscretions. **

**That night when Jess had appeared out of nowhere and sat there and knew she was miserable, something just snapped. No longer could her vast skills in denial mask the unending unhappiness that became her very existence. She wanted to feel happy again and after staying up all night trying to figure out a way to fix things, she came to the conclusion, that Logan was the one thing she needed to fix. **

**She broke up with him, with little remorse and went back home. Her mother needed to hear hard things that they should have said long ago. They had sat together for hours on the couch or in Lorelai's big bed, with lots of provisions and hashed out everything that they wished they could have talked about before. **

**Time went on, and she hadn't spoken to Jess or Logan. She concentrated on getting caught up and making the Yale campus home once again. Her father was paying for it now, since her relationship with her grandparents wasn't ideal. And then one day, near Christmas, she received a simple card with one sentence. 'I'm Sorry.' And she drove that night to Philadelphia and made sure that he was forgiven. **

**Rory had always wondered what sex with Jess would be like. She of course didn't have that much experience, but she always knew it was the kind that Cosmo urged you to have. Maybe it was his hands or the way his eyes seemed to reach her soul with one glance. Her mother had let it slip that Luke was her best too; maybe it was something in the genes of that family?**

**And that night, when she went to his apartment and she saw him give her a nervous smile, she pushed inside and kissed him. At first she was shocked at her own actions but then Jess distracted her. **

**Her previous theories of sex with Jess didn't even come close. Suddenly things made sense to her, and now here she is, once again entering the Pub that she had once entered with Logan, and felt so different. **

**It smelt the same and the same people were there probably. Not that she noticed. She had been busy pretending to be happy. Jess held onto her arm and he led her to the table he had been sitting at mere months ago. **

**Neither Rory nor Jess noticed that a blonde haired boy staring at them in envy. Logan Elias Huntzberger watched his ex girlfriend smile at that damn writer, and he felt the kind of pain, that a Huntzberger was never supposed to feel. **

**He watched as he leaned forward and tucked a stray hair behind Rory's ear and whispered something in her ear, and Logan had done those mere months ago. Had the right to touch her, to make her smile. But now looking at Rory's sparkling eyes, he realized that Rory had never really looked at him like that. **

**The waitress who had flirted with him before winked and set down his large glass of Stella, and he just stared at them, torturing himself with thoughts of what really went on with those two. Did they touch the way Logan loved to touch Rory?**

**And then he signaled for another round and when he looked up he saw Rory's blue eyes bearing down on him, and he saw a flicker of pity before she smiled at something her companion said. So Logan raised his glass to his once ago love. 'Cheers Darlin' He yelled and threw down money, chugged the whole beer and left the bar.**

**Rory watched her ex leave, in a tizzy of betrayal and hurt, and she shrugged. She may not have been completely fair to him, but she was determined to live out her life, whether it was with Jess or someone else, with pride. **

**So she raised her glass to his retreating back and smirked. 'Cheers Darlin' she shouted and Jess laughed with her. Neither of them noticed that the blonde boy had heard her toast and it had made his loss, all the worse. **


End file.
